Mobile van offers uncertain dads paternity testing

Who’s Your Daddy? It’s easy to find out in NYC thanks to an RV offering DNA tests and cruising the streets. (CBS)

A big brown-and-white RV is parking on street corners around New York City and offering paternity tests to men who are unsure whether their kids are really their own. The “Who’s Your Daddy” truck charges $275 to $575 for an official DNA test and Jared Rosenthal, who owns and drives the van for Health Street, isn’t hurting for customers.

“I had one woman get six kids DNA tested once,” Rosenthal told the New York Post. “I get a lot of military requests [to test kids]. I think when they’re away, they want the assurance.” Rosenthal also sees many men who are seeking visitation rights or who are tangled up in a divorce.

One customer “was so certain his 5-year-old boy was really his that he had the child’s face tattooed on his chest,” the Post reports. But when this man faced divorce and was forced into a DNA test he learned that he really wasn’t the father. Ouch!

In a case like this, Rosenthal often steps in as a counselor. “For two or three weeks after, he’d call me asking, ‘What should I do? I don’t want to tell anyone. I can’t tell my family,’ ” Rosenthal told the Post.

But not all stories end badly and Rosenthal has helped people connect with their long lost children. And of course in most cases, the man and child are related but those few exceptions make for “a lot of drama…It’s heartbreak hotel. It’s really, really tough sometimes,” Rosenthal told the Post.